Without live bullets, without dead bodies

By Nehemia Strasler

Violent demonstrations broke out in Prague last week during the joint

conference of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Young people arrived in the Czech capital from the four corners of

Europe to protest globalization and capitalism.Thousands of these

protesters were anarchists and hooligans, who exploited the

opportunity to destroy, to perpetrate violence and to do as much

damage as possible. They were dressed in black from head to toe

and came armed with chains, knives and other weapons. They swept

through the streets of Prague, leaving behind a trail of destruction -

ripping sidewalks apart with shovels, hurling rocks at police officers,

beating them with long poles and even throwing Molotov cocktails at

them.

The lives of the police officers were in danger. Many of them were

injured and required hospitalization. They defended themselves with

shields; they sprayed the protesters with tear gas; they dispersed them

with water cannons; they struck out at them with clubs; and they even

arrested dozens who were held for questioning.

However, despite this difficult situation, no Prague police officer

would ever have dreamed of using live ammunition. Nor did the

Prague police position snipers at strategic locations so that they could

"eliminate" protesters. The people of Prague know that in a

democratic country, police and security forces do not fire live

ammunition against demonstrators. If live bullets are used and if

civilians are killed, harsh criticism is directed against the police; senior

police officers pay for the tragic, horrible blunder with their jobs; and

the episode goes down in the history of the nation as an infamous blot

on its collective record.

In democratic states, the police force is a professional agency that

specializes in crowd dispersal through the use of a variety of methods,

but not by the use of bullets.

The police in Israel also know how to disperse crowds without having

to kill anybody, but this know-how is applied only when the

demonstrators happen to be Jews. The facts speak for themselves.

During the course of the violent demonstrations on behalf of former

Shas leader Aryeh Deri; in the harsh clashes with Ethiopian

immigrants who were protesting their treatment by the authorities; in

the riots organized on Bar-Ilan Street in Jerusalem by members of the

ultra-Orthodox Jewish community, some of whom hurled rocks at

police officers; and during the closure of major traffic arteries and

intersections by angry workers, the police never once fired a shot, not

even a rubber-coated bullet.

Yet, when a protest march was organized by local residents of the

Harakevet district of Lod, the police did fire rubber-coated bullets at

the demonstrators, wounding a large number of Arabs in the upper

parts of their bodies. When the Bedouin held a demonstration near

Omer, the police fired live bullets, killing one of the protesters.

Over the past week, police bullets killed 10 Israeli Arabs who

participated in the demonstrations. Although these were violent

clashes that were undoubtedly of a grave nature, the situation did not

automatically warrant the use of live weapons. Even the police are not

claiming that the lives of the officers at the demonstrations were in

"substantive and imminent danger," a situation that, in accordance with

a Supreme Court ruling, would justify the use of live ammunition.

The victims were not holding firearms when they were shot. The

police opened fire because this is how they were taught to disperse

Arab demonstrators. The police know that they have a license to

shoot Arabs, regardless of whether those Arabs live on this or that

side of the pre-1967 borders of Israel.

The police began to fire on the protesters in the very first hour of the

demonstrations, as if they were dealing with enemies of the state who

must be "put out of commission" - permanently. The police

conveniently forgot that they were, in fact, confronting citizens of this

country who were demonstrating because their pain is very real.

Israeli police officers are trained to solve any problem involving Arab

citizens by means of force. And if that does not work, then by means

of more force - because "the only language that the Arabs understand

is the language of force."

Nonetheless, the bullets and the deaths did not make the job of

dispersing the demonstrators any easier for the police. To the

contrary, they only fueled the flames: The demonstrations continued;

the violence actually increased; and the protesters maintained their

siege of many of the country's highways.

Haifa Police Chief Dov Shechter authorized his personnel to use live

ammunition against demonstrators in the city "after the rubber-coated

bullets and tear-gas canisters run out." Does this mean that inadequate

handling of crowd dispersal situations and faulty organization are

sufficient justification for killing civilians?

One of the television camera crews of Channel Two happened, quite

by accident, to film an incident in Nazareth in which seven police

officers cruelly beat two women, Dr. Nassrin Assouli and her sister,

who were protesting the actions of the police, but who were

completely unarmed, holding neither rocks nor clubs in their hands.

The police officers cursed Assouli, humiliated her, hurled her to the

ground, kicked her and broke her shoulder with a rifle butt. If this

incident had not been photographed, the police would undoubtedly

have denied that it ever happened.

And it is quite clear that this was not an isolated episode. How can

we explain, for example, the fact that as pediatrician Dr. Ataf

Ramadan was innocently driving down a side street in Nazareth,

police suddenly let loose with a a volley of bullets directed at his car,

wounding his wife in the chest and arms? In what possible way had

she endangered the lives of the police officers?

Because of heavy pressure from the leaders of the Israeli Arab

community, Prime Minister Ehud Barak was forced to agree to the

appointment of a commission of inquiry. This commission should be

led by a courageous magistrate, who should study each and every

fatal shooting incident and determine whether, in each case, the life of

the police officer who fired the shot was in "substantive and imminent

danger," or whether the motive for the fatal bullet was pure hatred.

The magistrate heading the commission should also reach relevant

executive conclusions regarding all levels of the law enforcement

establishment, including Police Commissioner Yehuda Wilk and

Public Security Minister (and acting Foreign Minister) Shlomo

Ben-Ami.

It is simply intolerable to see senior police officers creating a wall of

dead bodies between Jewish and Arab citizens of this country,

thereby effectively destroying all of the achievements, all the

cooperation and all the friendly ties associated with peaceful ethnic

coexistence in Israel. Israeli Arabs have always been, and continue to

be, welcome and equal citizens in this country. They must enjoy full

rights, including the right to demonstrate without having to count the

live bullets or the dead bodies in the aftermath